This relates generally to electronic devices and, more particularly, to electronic devices that include fabrics having conductive signal paths.
In traditional woven fabrics, warp and weft threads are orthogonal to one another, with the warp threads extending along the length of the fabric and the weft threads weaving back and forth across the warp threads. In needle weaving, weft threads are fed from one or both sides of the warp threads and are inserted into the fabric using a guide arm that guides the weft thread across the warp threads.
It can be challenging to form conductive signal paths in woven fabrics. Having warp threads restricted to one direction and weft threads restricted to a different direction can place undesirable limitations on the layout of conductive signal paths formed by conductive threads in the fabric. For example, to form a conductive signal path that changes from a warp direction to a weft direction, a conductive warp thread would need to be electrically connected to a conductive weft thread. This type of connection may be difficult to maintain and can lead to undesirable breaks in the signal path if the fabric is stressed.
It would therefore be desirable to be able to form woven fabrics with improved conductive signal paths.